


Ashes & Wine

by The_Moments_Gone



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Moments_Gone/pseuds/The_Moments_Gone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is there a chance you may change your mind? Or are we ashes and wine?</p>
<p>5 years after the end Damon comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes & Wine

_Warnings_ / _Spoilers_ : If you haven’t seen through 2×22 ( _As I Lay Dying_ ) then stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled. I have played a little fast and loose with the events of everything past the end of 2×20 ( _The Last Day_ ) so if there’s anything you don’t understand, please don’t hesitate to ask.

 

_Official_ _Disclaimer_ : All Vampire Diaries characters and plots belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson and the CW. I do not hold stock either the man or the company. Damon Salvatore, Elena Gilbert, and any other character featured are NOT mine. The title and summary comes from the A Fine Frenzy song  _Ashes & Wine, _and I don’t own that either.

  


_**1:37 pm  
Friday,  _September 21 st, 2018_  
Highway 7, Mystic Falls, Virginia** _

_Welcome to Mystic Falls_.

Something crawled up his spine at the sight of the familiar sign, something that had less and less to do with the thought of the vampires, witches, mystical rings and lone werewolf inhabiting the town and more to do with the fact that he hadn’t been home in almost six years.

Home…

That wasn’t a word that he associated with much of anywhere anymore. He didn’t apply it to his father’s land, or the boarding house, or the hundred acres of farmland that he had appropriated from distant cousins in Tuscany. It wasn’t something that he mentioned to people when he got drunk enough to actually talk about his brother and the town that he fled.

So why did it apply now?

He pulled off the road just past the newly staked mile marker 35 and didn’t bother to cut the engine of the Camaro. He’d been summoned back to Mystic Falls.  His well-meaning brother had made sure he had received at least a dozen invitations to Alaric Saltzman’s impending nuptials to his girlfriend of almost eight years and there was no way that he could, in good conscious, turn them down.

Especially after the photos that Stefan had shoved into the invitations when he was sure Jenna wasn’t looking.

On second thought, he knew why it had applied.

He had said it before, and he would most likely be quoted for it for the rest of his unnatural life. It always came down to the love of a woman. And Elena Gilbert wasn’t just any woman.

Not paying any attention to the fact that it was one o’clock in the afternoon and Highway 7 wasn’t exactly the least busy route into town, Damon forced himself out of the vehicle without using a door. He had to think of the damned photographs didn’t he? The ones that were currently tucked into the journal that he would never admit to having along with the invitation to Elena’s high school graduation, his name scrawled haphazardly across the front in her writing, and the lock of her hair that Damon had pilfered from Bonnie’s right before leaving. It had been cut in case of emergencies – Jeremy was only a blood relation, not a brother and your own DNA works better for a locator spell, but the danger was gone, and he couldn’t get the nagging feeling out of his head that if he left without it he might never see her again.

He’d left all of the photos of her at the boarding house, save a candid that she herself had taken on his phone when she’d begun to live again. He had the memories every time he closed his eyes, anything else and he would have been back in Mystic Falls before he’d even had the chance to cross the state line.

Damon wanted to damn Stefan for eternity – again – for guessing as much.

And the part that made him want to shed his ring right then and there was the fact that there wasn’t even anything explicitly special about the pictures that Stefan had included. There were twelve of them, a different one for each envelope, and they seemed to be taken at different times and places over the course of the last six years. The only thing consistent in any of them is the fact that she was not looking at the camera.

They were simply  _Elena_.

Whether she was laughing with Caroline while they both sported matching chocolate cherry milkshake mustaches or she was curled up in the oversized wingback chair that he remembered being in the parlor with his first edition copy of Gone With the Wind dangling from her fingertips, she was the Elena that he had carried with him in his memory when he left Mystic Falls.

And he missed her.

_God_  how he missed her.

He’d spent six years in every wild and scandalous corner of the Earth trying to wipe the image of her out of his mind. Five years of hearing about her second hand – Sabrina had  _loved_ the drunken phone call she’d gotten almost a year after he’d left and Ric told him that the next time he called it was to be during regular human hours or he was going to just flat out refuse to answer questions – trying to make sure that his plan for her to live a safe and happy life – without him – was actually working.

But just as Stefan had said, or was it Katherine, it hadn’t worked.

This was why he was stopped sixteen miles out of the official city limits trying to push himself back into his Camaro and actually go to this wedding. __

Because once the celebration was over and he wished Ric and his bride-to-be a happy union; once he saw that Elena was as perfectly fine and perfectly happy as his brother’s photographs told him she was, then he could disappear to parts unknown and all would be well.

A part of his brain that sounded a bit too much like his sire laughed sardonically. _Keep telling yourself that._

_**3:52 pm** _

_**Friday, September 21 st, 2018** _ __

_**Salvatore Boarding House, Mystic Falls** _

“I can’t believe…” Elena threw her purse on the table and turned to glare at the man standing in her kitchen.

Her kitchen.

It was still weird to think of the space that she now occupied as hers. “Stefano Giuseppe Salvatore what the  _fuck_  were you thinking?”

“Mommy said a bad word.”

The giggle from the other side of the kitchen island was the only thing that brought Elena’s tone back to something resembling civil. “I’m sorry baby.” She pulled a Hershey’s kiss out of the jar near the sink and handed it to her daughter. “Why don’t you go get out of your uniform and into some play clothes and get your pack ready for Uncle Jer?”

Stefan watched Elena’s lips tighten into a smile and knew that the second Laine left the room he might as well stake himself with the chopstick that the younger woman pulled out of her hair. She’d been livid about this ever since he had asked her if he could ride with her to pick her daughter up from school. “Do you need help Laine?” He asked quickly, watching as the girl stopped skipping to the stairs and turned to ponder the question.

“You go up those stairs and dinner tonight will be laced with vervain.” Elena promised with a sarcastic grin, he should have known that this wasn’t a conversation that he could smile and hide behind a five year old to end. Delaine giggled, the burnished chestnut ringlets that Elena had spent almost an hour curling into her daughter’s hair to set the night before bouncing against her cheeks. The little girl watched her mother, startling blue eyes seeming to understand the threat and just how serious the older Gilbert was about carrying it out. Elena sighed and shook out her hair. “ _Miriana_   _Delaine_. Play clothes. Now.” She put just enough emphasis on her words that the child sighed almost dramatically and hopped up the steps to her room.

He didn’t want to explain this. Of all things he didn’t want to tell his girlfriend turned ex turned housemate turned whatever they were calling the current living arrangement that they had going on, exactly why he had tracked his brother’s bank accounts and travel records to make sure that one of the dozen or so invitations that were mailed out to Damon actually got to him was at the top of the list. But Elena was standing in front of him now, hands on her hips and upper lip pulled between her teeth in contemplation.

“Would it help if I told you that Ric and I deliberated about this since he proposed to Jenna?” He dropped his hands, palm down onto her shoulders and then ran his left across to lift her chin. “They were –  _are_  – friends.” He broke it down to the simplest answer, knowing that Elena wasn’t going to let him get away with it that easy.

Elena wished that she didn’t understand. She wished that she were the kind of spoiled woman that could justify throwing a temper tantrum about this. But with her daughter upstairs, she knew it was impossible, and not because she didn’t understand. She’d spent far too much time in the eight years that she had known the Salvatore brothers understanding – who they were,  _what_  they were, how they lived. And she’d spent the last five years understanding the little nuances that made Damon head for the hills the second he was given the all clear. She released her lip and sighed heavily. “The invitations were sent out four months ago.” She pointed out with a glare. “Even  _Jenna_  knew that you were sending one to each of Damon’s P.O. boxes, so  _why_  am I just hearing about this now?”

A part of Stefan wished that his first reaction wasn’t to blurt out that he knew that she would have reacted just as badly then as she was doing now. He was equally as grateful that the other part of him knew that wouldn’t be the reaction that would save him from a vervain dinner and it was that part of him that ran a calming hand over his head to let Elena take a few breaths before he answered. “We didn’t even know if he still checked the boxes,” he told her softly. It was a lie. Damon had set up the P.O. boxes in each major city so he  _could_  get news from the home front without them knowing where he was. He may have checked out of Mystic Falls after Klaus was dead, but it didn’t mean that he had checked out of Elena’s life completely. “He’s never in the same place longer than a few days,” another lie, and Stefan allowed himself to think that his big brother would be proud of the way that his lips weren’t trembling and he held Elena’s gaze even as he lied to her face.

“Stefan, I swear –”

But the vampire wasn’t listening to her. “Look, ‘Lena.” His hands dropped to her shoulders again. They had all learned years ago that touch went a long way to calming Elena Gilbert when she was upset. “I’m still don’t know what happened between you and Damon the year I was missing – and I really don’t want you to tell me –” Elena’s mouth opened and shut and he put a finger to his lips because he knew that she was just going to say ‘nothing happened’ and he really didn’t need both of them lying to each other on this particular day. “But it was  _six_ _years_ _ago_. And he’s going to be in –”

She nodded; there was really nothing else for her to do. Her only other option would have been to tell Stefan the reason why she was anxious to see Damon again, and Elena couldn’t have that. “Of course six years isn’t a big deal to you.” She snorted after a moment.

“He’s here for the wedding.” Stefan went on, pretending not to hear her. “Ric wants Damon here to stand up with him, and Jenna wants Damon here to make Ric happy.” It was his trump card; the one he didn’t want to play and the one that he probably should have reached for first. With all of the changes in their lives in the last six years, the one thing that hadn’t changed was Elena’s unwavering ability to do what she had to for her family. “You don’t have to talk to him, you don’t have to acknowledge his existence, and you don’t even have to dance with him at the wedding if you don’t want to.” The last part had been to remind her that as maid of honor, it was her job to ensure the wedding went smoothly for the bride.

There was a shout from upstairs that her daughter couldn’t find her favorite pair of pajamas to take to her uncle’s and Stefan’s phone shrilled before Elena could shout an answer. Life had given them fifteen minutes to argue over this, and life had come back to remind Elena that she had more important things than focusing on the return of Damon Salvatore. “I’m still far from happy that I was kept out of this one.” She started, before looking in the direction of the stairs and shouting that she’d be up in a minute. Stefan understood that she was letting it rest for the mere fact that it wouldn’t do any good to argue about it. “Groveling probably wouldn’t be beneath you.” With a huff she grabbed her hair sticks off of the counter and shoved them in her hair on her way to the stairs. “And I’m doing this for Jenna!”

_**4:24 pm  
Friday, September 21 st, 2018  
The Westin Hotel, Mystic Falls** _

He hadn’t told Elena that he was leaving the house. While it wasn’t a new occurrence, after the argument they had had it probably wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done either. The Miss Mystic Pageant was supposed to start in a little over two hours though, and he knew that after she got her daughter packed, she would remember that she promised Caroline she would be there early to help her run point on this year’s girls. As long as he was dressed and present by the time that the girls began their descent he would probably be forgiven. And if that didn’t work, Caroline had decided on a girl’s night after the Historical Society let her go. He wasn’t sure who was invited, but Caroline was talking about some sort of all-male review in DC that made Stefan glad that Jeremy was taking Laine for the night.

“Are you planning on standing out in the hall all night?”

This brought Stefan back to the reason why he’d left the boarding house. Not only was the door unlocked, but his brother had also used the safety lock to prop the door open, which would probably explain why he knew exactly who was on the other side. He sighed and gave it a push. “It’s nice to see that you’ve mellowed in your travels.”

Damon wasn’t paying attention. Stefan followed the sound of drawers opening and closing through the living area of the suite and into the bedroom, stopping off at the kitchenette to drop his keys the bag that he had packed to make his brother’s stay more comfortable, where his brother was hanging up thousand dollar shirts and muttering about the fact that he was in Mystic Falls so there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to sleep in his own bed. “I drove from L.A.” Damon took a deep breath so he wouldn’t actually try to kill his brother. “I’ll be mellow after a pint of blood and some decent Scotch.” There was frown as Damon looked at his brother’s empty hands. “Two things that you weren’t nice enough to bring me.”

He would have laughed if he didn’t think that that would mean his brother would stake him with a table leg. “There’s a fifty year old bottle of Macallan and some O neg in a bag in the kitchen.”  Damon’s face almost lit up and he smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“I’d thank you if this were my bedroom.” He was thankful, he wasn’t about to pretend that he wasn’t – in a town like Mystic Falls, finding a good blood supply was more than a little difficult – but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to bitch about the fact that this wasn’t the homecoming that he wanted. Stefan shoved his hands in his pockets and Damon stopped toying with the garment bag that just screamed Caraceni.

He hadn’t physically spoken to his brother in six years, letting postcards and messages scrawled on napkins do the talking for him. After he’d gone through what Damon had referred to as ‘dumb-ass detox,’ Stefan had watched his brother pack and give Damon once last hug before telling him that the open road was calling. After well over a hundred years of avoiding each other, it had been enough to know that he was alive and that he was no longer concerned with ruining his life. There were too many times while he was gone that Stefan wanted to track him down, to force him back, but he understood now that it wouldn’t have ended well. The only reason that Damon was back now was for the wedding and a handful of pictures that Stefan knew he wouldn’t be able to turn down.

“And I texted so you knew I’d arrived, not so you’d drive over and stare at me.” Final garment bag in place, Damon turned his attention fully on his brother. There was an awkward pause as he physically assessed the man in front of him. Ric insisted that they kept Stefan on a blood regiment that kept him both healthy and sane, and from what he could see, it was working. While not any older than he was when Damon saw him last, Stefan was no longer looking as warn down as he had after his two month stint in the basement of the boarding house. There was also a hint of a smile in his brother’s eyes, something that if he weren’t terrified to discover involved Elena, he’d joke about his brother getting laid on a regular basis. “Am I going to get an actual ‘hello’?”

It surprised Stefan that he hadn’t properly welcomed his brother back to town yet. When they were younger – see also: human – it would have been the very first thing he would have done. Two steps forward and the brothers wrapped their arms around each other. “It’s good to see you.” Stefan choked out, trying not to make a bigger deal out of it than it was that Damon had finally returned.

“It’s good to be seen.” Damon concurred; pulling out of the first hug the brothers had shared in almost a decade.


End file.
